


To connect, one must first be disconnected

by Jadzia_Bear



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Criminal Minds
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, First Meetings, Fluff, Masturbation, Neighbors
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-23 17:39:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6124802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadzia_Bear/pseuds/Jadzia_Bear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I hate to be a bother, but I’ve just moved in next door and the complete contents of my kitchen amounts to no more than sriracha and beer. I was wondering if I might borrow a cup of sugar?”</p><p>Or, the one where Jemma’s neighbour at the start of season 2 is Spencer Reid.</p><p>Warnings for excessive geekery and an overabundance of fandom references (please send help).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've only seen about half the seasons of Criminal Minds, so please forgive me for any canon inconsistencies.

Spencer was just about to settle himself on the couch with the remote control and a freshly delivered cheese pizza, when there was a knock at the door.

He opened it to find a young woman standing in the hall. The profiler in him immediately recognised the nervous smile of someone with mild socially anxiety. That, paired with her round, hopeful hazel eyes made him want to like her already.

“Hello,” she said, lingering a little on the ‘o’ sound. “I’m Jemma from next door.” A vague flap of her hand indicated the apartment to the left of his, which made sense. Mrs Wilson and her yappy Maltese terrier had moved out last week and Spencer knew someone else had already moved in because, even though they were much quieter than the previous tenants, he heard the pipes thump and whoosh at the exact same time each morning as they turned on the shower. He would probably be even more aware of the sound now that he knew it was a pretty girl stepping into that shower.

He pushed the inappropriate thought aside before it could make him blush. “I’m Spencer. Nice to meet you.”

“I hate to be a bother,” she began, “but I’ve just moved in and the complete contents of my kitchen amounts to no more than sriracha and beer. I was wondering if I might borrow a cup of sugar?”

“Sure, no problem,” Spencer said, stepping back to let her in.

“Thank you,” she said gratefully as she followed him to the kitchen, “you’re very kind—oh! I love your teapot!”

Spencer’s gaze flicked to his ceramic TARDIS teapot and his mouth twitched into a smile. “Thanks. Are you a fan?” he asked as he got the canister of sugar out of the cupboard and set it on the counter.

She nodded enthusiastically. “Who’s your favourite doctor?”

“Tom Baker,” he answered without hesitation. “He’s the one I grew up with.”

“Same,” Jemma said, her smile turning wistful. “My brothers and I would race home after school to watch it.”

Spencer considered putting the sugar in a disposable cup so that he wouldn’t need to worry about whether it would be returned, but he quickly decided it was worth risking the loss of a mug if it gave his attractive Whovian neighbour a reason to knock on his door again.

“So what are you making with the sugar?” he asked as he filled the mug for her.

“Hm? Oh, um…” Her gaze slid up to the left, not up to the right, indicating that she was creating the answer, not remembering it. He’d seen lying witnesses do it a million times.

“Pancakes,” she said, fiddling with her earring in a blindingly obvious tell. Even before she reached the end of the word it looked like she’d realised that one can’t make pancakes from sugar, sriracha and beer. She pressed her lips together in a nervous smile.

Spencer just smiled politely back and gave her the cup of sugar. She wasn’t a witness and he wasn’t at work; he’d let her have her white lie.

He waited for her to step out of the kitchen so he could escort her back to the front door, assuming that she would be keen to be on her way now that she had what she wanted, but she stayed rooted to the spot.

Her lips parted, and if he had to guess, he’d say she was casting about for a way to keep the conversation going. He was in no hurry for her to leave, but by the time he’d started working on coming up with a conversation topic of his own, she was already giving in to the weight of the awkward silence that had grown between them.

“Well, I suppose I should go.” There was that sweet, self-deprecating smile again. “Don’t want to disrupt your evening.”

Spencer shrugged a shoulder as they made their way slowly back past the den to the front door. “There’s not much to interrupt. I was just going to eat some pizza and watch Star Trek IV,” he said with a self-deprecating smile of his own.

She sucked in a breath. “The one with the whales? That’s one of my _favourites._ I haven’t watched it in years!”

Spencer smiled at her enthusiasm, then licked his bottom lip. “You’re welcome to join me, if you don’t mind cheese pizza.”

“Truly?” she implored. “I really don’t want to impose, but it’s just, well, like I said, I just moved here and I don’t really know anyone and… I miss my friends.”

Something in her cracked open a little at the admission. He saw the vulnerability in the small collapse of her shoulders, the honesty in the earnest pucker of her brow. So that’s what it was, she was lonely. She probably didn’t even need the sugar.

Spencer crossed one arm over the other and glanced down at his bare feet. “At the risk of sounding like a hopeless nerd, I always thought of Star Trek as an old friend.”

Her expression softened. “Me too, actually.”

“Well, maybe dinner with one old friend and one new one will help you settle into the building,” he suggested.

She looked like she might be about to melt with gratitude, so he motioned her towards the brown leather couch before he had to scoop her up off the floor.

The next two hours passed all too quickly. He and Jemma shared the couch and the pizza and took turns quoting the various characters and pointing out their favourite parts. She even seemed to enjoy all the factoids he had to share along the way about the actors and the filming process.

Spencer was closing the pizza box and silently congratulating himself on a highly successful social encounter when one of the neurochemistry texts on the bookshelf next to Jemma caught her eye. “I remember this one from when I was doing my first PhD,” she enthused, running a finger down its spine.

The lonely intellect inside Spencer snapped to attention. “Wait—you’ve got multiple PhDs, too?”

Cue nearly two hours of lively and in-depth discussion on the wonders of the human brain, not to mention a generous dose of empathy for the challenges of making your way in the world with an IQ that was significantly above average.

It was past midnight by the time they finally pried themselves away from the conversation so they could get to bed, and by that point he was tempted to entertain the possibility that she was actually created in a lab. Surely no woman on Earth could be this perfect.

“I’m so glad I knocked on your door,” she admitted as she stepped out into the hall.

“You should be.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “If you’d knocked on Mr Johnson’s door across the hall, all you would have gotten is a rant about increasing rent prices.” This earned him a sleepy smile.

Spencer leaned against the stained wood door trim in an attempt to appear casual. “Hey, can I, um, give you my number, just in case you need anything? Getting started in a new city on your own can be—”

“Oh yes! It certainly can be,” she agreed whole-heartedly as she pulled her phone out of her pocket. She took down his number and offered hers in return, which felt promising.

“We should do this again sometime, when we don’t have work in the morning,” she said, yawning.

Spencer stifled a yawn of his own. “Agreed.”

“Well, goodnight,” she said finally, with a little wave.

“Goodnight, Jemma.”

She returned to her room and he closed the door, the long forgotten cup of sugar still sitting on his coffee table.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've had our meet-cute, now time to take things up a notch ;)

Spencer only had to wait two days for Jemma to make use of his phone number.

He got home from work at the usual time, messenger bag bursting with files and arms full of more ‘light reading’ relevant to the BAU’s current case.

Through some miracle, he managed to unlock and open the front door without dropping anything. Once inside, he kicked the door closed with his foot, wincing when it slammed louder than intended.

He set the pile of papers down on the coffee table, dropped his bag onto the couch and went into the kitchen for a glass of water. His gaze caught on the TARDIS teapot and, while he could have said it reminded him of Jemma, the truth was he’d barely stopped thinking about her since the moment they met.

Morgan had laughed out loud and clapped Spencer on the shoulder when he’d told his teammate about his beautiful, brilliant, geeky neighbour, insisting Spencer ask her on a date pronto, but Spencer was disinclined to agree.

He found a clean glass and filled it from the faucet. This relationship was too important to rush. If nothing else, he felt like there was the potential for a friendship between them that was unlike most others he’d ever had.

 They were peers, equals, on so many levels, and the burgeoning connection between them felt like a tiny ember he had to blow on in just the right way if he was to keep it burning. He wanted to give it the oxygen it needed to grow, but too much and he’d smother it. If and when he ever did ask her out, he wanted to be as sure as possible that the response would be a favourable one.

He drained the rest of the water and set the empty glass down beside the sink, then headed towards the bathroom for a shower. He worked at the button of his left shirt cuff as he walked, but before he could get it undone, his phone buzzed with a text message. He pulled it out of his pocket and nearly dropped it when he saw the name ‘Jemma’ on the screen.

_Hello, Jemma here. I thought I just heard your door, are you home? Any chance you could pop over for a second? I have a rather embarrassing request._

The text ended with a little smiley face with blushing red cheeks.

He typed out a quick reply, heart fluttering in his chest.

_Sure. Be right over._

He wondered as he hit Send whether he should be putting more thought into the message—that was something people did, right? Agonise over the wording of texts to people they were attracted to?—but it was too late now, so he pocketed his phone and keys and within moments he was knocking on Jemma’s door, wondering what in all the world her embarrassing request could be.

The door opened immediately.

“Hi,” Jemma said, already looking apologetic. She ushered him quickly inside and shut the door. “I’m _so_ sorry to ask you this, but can you please unzip me?” She turned around and swept her hair out of the way, presenting him with the zipper on the back of her dress. “I’ve been wrestling with it for the last ten minutes, but it seems to be stuck.”

“Oh, sure,” Spencer agreed easily. The zipper had been unzipped as far as the middle of her shoulder blades, but upon first try it did indeed seem to be stuck. He set to work jiggling it carefully, trying to free it.

“By the way, I thought of something I wanted to add to that discussion about psychological pharmacology we were having the other night,” she said over her shoulder to him.

“Yeah?” The zipper was now happy to go up, but still wouldn’t come any further down than it had before. “Did you want to come over tonight and—”

“I’m actually just dashing off to meet my, um, dad tonight, but how about tomorrow night?” she asked.

“Sounds great,” he said as the zipper finally gave in and slid smoothly downwards.

Spencer swallowed as the sides of the grey dress fell away to reveal the smooth skin of her back and the clasp of her white lace bra.

He cleared his throat. “All done.”

“Thank you ever so much,” she said gratefully as she turned back around. “Now, if I may be so rude.”

She opened the door for him, keeping it between herself and the hall outside to shield any potential onlookers from her state of partial undress. “I’m about to have the quickest shower ever, and with any luck I won’t have to endure a Dad Lecture about tardiness.”

Spencer’s mouth quirked with amusement as he stepped out into the hall. “Good luck! See you tomorrow.”

“Yes! Tomorrow!” she grinned, her face visible around the edge of the door right up until the last moment.

He returned to his own apartment, the vision of her bare skin clear as a polaroid in his mind’s eye. He headed for the bathroom on autopilot, removing his work clothes and tossing them in the laundry hamper without even registering what he was doing.

He’d heard Morgan talk about how sexy a woman’s back could be, and he supposed he understood—certainly the sight of Jemma’s back had provoked something in him: a desire to touch, a desire to see more—but more than that, it was the intimacy of the situation that made his heart swell in his chest.

Perhaps he was over-thinking it, but she had trusted him enough to share that small moment of vulnerability with him. _That_ was what he wanted more of, to be the first person she thought of when she needed help, to be the person she was comfortable revealing herself to.

He turned the shower on and just seconds later heard the dull bang of the pipes as she did the same on the other side of the wall.

Unbidden, his brain fed him images of that grey dress falling to the floor, of her fingers unhooking the clasp of that white bra and letting it fall, too. And her underwear—it almost made him light-headed, the way his blood rushed south at just the thought—was it white lace as well? Or some other colour entirely? Regardless, it had no doubt been discarded by now too.

She was only a couple of feet away from him, nothing between their unclothed bodies but one thin apartment wall. He fought against the tantalising notion, feeling disrespectful for thinking of her in such a way but already growing hard as the hot water warred with the cold. After a few moments the pipes sorted themselves out, the spray settling into a hot, steady stream that matched the fire already sparking under his skin.

_I’m sorry, Jemma,_ he thought, touching one hand to the wall that separated them and wrapping the other around his hardening erection. He succumbed to the shamefully clear images his brilliant brain supplied, of caressing her skin, of being kissed by her warm, soft mouth, of being _hers_ , as he worked himself faster and faster.

He came all too quickly with a silent cry.

He sank against the wall, burning cheek pressed to the cold tile as he caught his breath.


End file.
